Interview with Emma Thomas (APFEL – A Practice for Everday Life)

Emma, you are living and working in London – what advantages do you think does the city offer for a designer?

It’s an amazing city, I love London, but I can also hate it (laughs) – it’s expensive. But it is fantastic, there are loads of great galleries, museums, other creatives, amazing music things going on. There’s just something happening at every moment if you want it to. I grew up in the remote countryside in the North of England, the total opposite of London. I moved from the middle of nowhere to study in a big city – and I really enjoyed it, so I stayed.

How would you describe the British Graphic-Design(er)? Is there one?

In London many of the designers working here aren’t necessarily British, they are from all over the world. I think that really influences the design coming out of our city. There’s people coming in and moving away all the time, so there’s a big mix of people, for sure.

Every city and town in Britain is different, so it’s equally difficult to sum up a typically British graphic designer! There are references coming to our work from our immediate surroundings, of course, like typography and local visual vernaculars that influence us. They are subtle, so that you might not notice them immediately.

You clearly have a great amount of clients and your work is getting a lot of attention, also because it is seen in public places, like museums. How did you achieve, to get so well established and what would you say is the reason for that?

I don’t really know how one would describe established. I think we’re really lucky, that we get to work with a lot of really good people and on some great projects. Kirsty and I started working together when we were at the Royal College of Art. We were initially working for some artists and curators and actually there wasn’t so much interesting  work going on for cultural institutions at that moment – we saw an opportunity there. We were in some ways trying to push the work a little further. We enjoyed working with other creatives, because we enjoyed working with like-minded people and for subjects which we found valuable. It was a good creative process for us.

If you work on something that you truly believe in, then you absolutely put in 200% effort, and from that comes more work. If people are happy and enjoy working with you, and they also enjoy the work, than they often tell somebody else about it. So, I suppose, we’ve been really lucky and worked hard.

Would you describe your style as feminine? And if so, does that have an effect on your clients?

No, I don’t think it’s particularly feminine at all. We deliberately chose to use a company name that doesn’t have our own names in it – this enables the studio and the work to belong to everyone rather than just Kirsty and I, so everyone feels included as an important part of the studio.

I find the idea of a studio ‘style’ problematic – it goes against our approach, which is where our work develops out of a concept, research, content and context rather than a ‘style‘; our work looks different for each project.

Do you think the collaboration and exhibition design for the artist LINDER is to be connected to that topic?

The content of the LINDER exhibition was quite particular. The exhibition is of her work, which inherently includes women. She’s making work as a feminist, and is very prolific in the punk and post-punk scene in the UK. In her work she often collages pornography and domestic objects, as a feminist statement or reaction to what was going on at the time she created it. With the exhibition design, our approach with architects Carmody Groarke came out of her work and the context in which she was making it – we extended some of those preconceptions and ideas. For example, the hanging net curtains that you partially see people through was a reference to Manchester, domestic life and the voyeur. But the fabric wasn’t meant to be directly feminine. The colours on the walls were about make-up, but it wasn’t because we wanted our work to be associated with a feminine idea, it was just about the content of the show.

How much freedom do you get from your clients, when working on projects? How do you proceed?

We always meet someone before we work with them. It really is so much about the type of people you work with, and that relationship is often what forms and shapes the project. It’s not just about the brief, it’s the people and the team that you’re working with. We enjoy meeting all sorts of different people and learning something new with each project.

It is said, that the design of german exhibitions is very shallow or simple. Your exhibition-design seems more like one big concept, with love for details. Do you think, that this could maybe have something to do with the british mentality? Or is its something else?

I’m not sure about that and I’m not interested in whether what we’re doing is typically British. What makes us suited for exhibitions is that we have worked a lot with artists, for whom we have to really understand their work and approach to be able to create something right for them – the identity for the show comes out of the work itself and therefore communicates more about the content. We like to work in different mediums – print, editorial and identities as well as spaces, and that adaptability is suited for working on exhibitions. With exhibition design we often work as a reasonable size team which includes the museum curators, project managers, 3D designers or architects etc. We like working with teams, perhaps because we’re a team too – in the studio there are five of us now. When you work on exhibitions, it relies a lot on good communication, between us, the curators and any other collaborators or producers. Our aim is to work as one group all together with a common goal, sharing ideas, and that’s what grows into the project.

Do you share the opinion, that cultural institutions have more respect for the work of a designer than others?

They are different, but I wouldn’t necessarily say that they have more respect per se.

We were talking about it recently, because we did a project for a new restaurant and hotel that has just opened in London. It’s a really lovely space – for us it is a more commercial job than the ones we do for cultural sector clients, but that hasn’t made it any less rewarding. Working with the chef there is in some ways like working with an artist. We realised that curators are used to working with designers, because they’re doing shows or publications regularly – when working with commercial clients, though, we might be the first designer they’ve ever worked with. But it’s interesting, because we show them a different way of working and they show us how they work. Sometimes we can help advise what they need more. On the other hand, some projects allow you to have more authorship and creative input than others. It really depends on who the person is that we’re working with, rather than whether the project is for a public institution, an individual or a company

It seems to us, that your daily working routine is very complex and intensive. Do you also work on free projects apart from the work your doing for the agency?

Yes but we love it. We are also doing some other studio projects at the moment. You’ll find out about them soon (laughs).

We are working on some products, posters and textiles. Sometimes I’ll work on some research and ideas in the background, and those turn into a studio project or feed into other projects.

How would you describe the style of Troika?

We actually studied together at the Royal College of Art. I think they’re amazing. They forged an interesting path that is a mixture between graphic design, communication, products, installation and art and then it’s nice to see their work existing in all those different places and venues.

You and Eva, your good friends – Do you think a collaboration between APFEL and Troika could be possible?

Yes, perhaps (laughs). It should be interesting.